Streetcar

Streetcars, also known as trolleycars, were electrified rail vehicles which were the main mode of transportation in many North American cities and towns from 1888 to the 1940s. Streetcars were initially pulled by horses along steel rails down the middle of streets, but, in Richmond, Virginia, the New Yorker inventor Frank Sprague developed a self-propelled streetcar by creating a central generating station that provided electricity to the system. Streetcars were connected to this power source with long poles, called trolleys, that extended from the car to wires that ran overhead. By the 1940s, streetcars were less relevant as cities across the nation replaced them with buses, and the automobiel became the dominant vehicle for transportation. Thousands of people lined Richmond's Main Street on 25 November 1949 to watch the final ride of a system that had served the city for more than half a century. To salvage their metal, the streetcars were burned. However, Portland, Oregon; Seattle, Washington; Salt Lake City, Utah; Tucson, Arizona; and Atlanta, Georgia built modern streetcar systems, and New Orleans, Louisiana boasts the world's longest continuously-operating streetcar system.